“I am sitting on a balcony with a cup of coffee when I open the book. I have been waiting for this moment, a block of time when I can fall into the journey this writer is sure to create. Admittedly there are expectations of her. I have been reading her writing for years, and I have never openly recommended one of her books. All I have ever said to friends and family is she has this incredible knack for a sentence. For me it is the perfect example of economy in writing when a writer packs history, philosophy and a sly grinned humor into six or seven words leaving us with a period, the simplest of punctuation as if it were nothing. Bang for your buck I would say.”

~snip~

“Dead Girl, Live Boy is not a novella for the light hearted. You will not find butterflies or daisies or puppies or cute little kittens. What you will find is a city dotted with hope as irony and a survival fashioned from those who gave meaning to grit. Maybe we find there are no true heroes or quite possibly we all are because even as irony hope is still hope found in small spaces amongst the characters of this book.

“Michelle Brooks paints a picture as real as most any I have seen weaving fiction like Krakauer reporting a story. I feel I have a secret, as if I am living amongst one of the greats, a legendary writer.”book, by Shea Goff, March 26, 2011

“What is the best advice you could give other writers about writing or publishing?

“Stick with it if it’s something you feel you really want to do. Try to write every single day at the same time. At the same time, don’t get overwhelmed. Steady progress will complete a book just as well as a big burst of inspiration and energy, neither of which I have. Do it for the love of the thing itself and try not to get too result-focused. Don’t take any rejection personally.”Michelle Brooks – Dead Girl, Live Boy, SellingBooks.com, March 11, 2011

Storylandia 3, The Wapshott Journal of Fiction is pleased to present Dead Girl, Live Boy, a novella by Michelle Brooks. Dead Girl, Live Boy is an unflinching view of a haunted family landscape scattered with undetonated landmines that threaten the characters’ fragile existences. Set in a crumbling Detroit as the millennium approaches, Dead Girl, Live Boy calls to mind the works of Hubert Selby Jr. and an urban Tennessee Williams. Brooks creates a darkly comic and claustrophobic world that warrants attention. Both despairing and hopeful, her novella succeeds as both a survivor’s story and a cautionary tale.